Stasis and progress

An interesting article at greentechmedia.com offers insights into the state of offshore wind power as the long twilight struggle over Cape Wind plays out here.

Patriot Staff

An interesting article at greentechmedia.com offers insights into the state of offshore wind power as the long twilight struggle over Cape Wind plays out here.

The site talks in depth with Peter Mandelstam, president of NRG Bluewater Wind, which has a purchase power agreement for its proposed wind farm off Delaware. After noting that Cape Wind “may be on the verge of freeing itself from regulatory snares in Nantucket Sound,” the article details the U.S. Department of Energy’s Offshore Wind Initiative, funded to the tune of $43 million over the next five years.

The money is meant to create a big-picture view of how to deploy 54 gigawatts of offshore capacity, according to Green Tech Media.

That’s the good news for wind fans. On the other hand, Mandelstam says a lack of consistent federal policy and planning, in regulation and taxation, has made U.S. development “very challenging.

“There are no banks in the world willing to finance offshore wind in the United States,” Mandelstam said, which is not the case for European projects.

Mandelstam told the service that financial institutions aren’t confident that offshore wind can produce consistently over a decade. He noted “50 issues the banks are worried about,” but argued that “all of those technology risks have been eliminated.”

Meanwhile, Cape Wind released a “white paper” documenting the employment and clean power pluses it says the Nantucket Sound project will bring to Massachusetts.

The paper notes that “Cape Wind’s turbines will be producing power about 86 percent of the time and during that time the operators of the electric grid in New England will reduce the amount of power being generated from fossil fueled power plants.”

Those who argue that natural gas will remain a cheaper alternative to wind-generated electricity need to read a Federal Energy Regulatory Commission report, according to Cape Wind. The document says FERC predicts a 31 percent increase in electricity prices in the state this winter as “forward prices for winter natural gas in the Northeast are significantly higher than they were last year.”

As for other renewable options from out of state, the document quotes the Department of Public Utilities finding that a “significant expansion of the transmission system… would be required to support the delivery into southern New England of large quantities of renewable energy…”